The man shot him a sardonic glance but did not answer.
Aunt Cal got up. "I really think, Rose," she said, "we should be starting for home. It's growing dark and we've had quite enough excitement for one day." She turned to the sailor and fixed him with a stern glance. "I sincerely trust, Gopher," she said, "that you will not leave the neighborhood until I've had a further talk with you. I--I naturally wish to hear more details of my cousin's last days."
The man did not answer for a moment. But there was an insistence in Aunt Cal's tone that was not to be disregarded. Perhaps he thought that, since the game was up in any case, his best chance lay in compliance. "Okay," he said with another lift of his bony shoulders. "I'll hang round for a spell."
As Miss Blossom's little car rolled away down the hill, no one spoke for a time. Eve and I were in the rear seat. Hattie May had gone with Hamish in his car. It was with some difficulty that we had succeeded in prying the latter loose from the man whom he considered his lawful prisoner. What was the use, he insisted, of pulling off a capture if you had to turn the fellow loose again?
But Aunt Cal's wishes of course had prevailed and Hamish, still grumbling, had been obliged to depart and leave the villain, as he dubbed him, to his own devices.
As we turned into the main highway at The Corners, Miss Rose settled back. "Well, it does beat all," she said, "the mysterious ways Providence does work. To think of that rascal Carter sealing up that old cupboard with the will in it and going off to the ends of the earth!"
"No, Rose, not a rascal," Aunt Cal returned, "you mustn't think of him like that. It was just a--a kind of prank. He never meant to keep the house from me for long, he says so in this note. You see I--I was away out West at the time he left. I think it was just as Gopher said, he wanted to come back a rich man----"
"And make you sorry you'd married Tom Poole instead of him," put in Miss Rose calmly. "That was just like him, always believing that money was all that counted even in a love affair."
"He says," said Aunt Cal softly, "that he hopes I will forgive him everything. I believe he realized--at the end--the mistakes he'd made."
